Category Archives: Military

A black site is a location at which a publicly unacknowledged black (or highly classified military/defense) project is conducted.

The term has gained notoriety in recent years in reference to secret prisons operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), generally outside of U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction, which are used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain alleged unlawful enemy combatants. The existence of CIA black sites or secret prisons was acknowledged by then-President George W. Bush in a speech on September 6, 2006.

Well, it turns out black sites are not just run by the CIA or outside of the United States, we have a black site right here in Chicago, Illinois, Obama’s hometown! But it took a foreign newspaper, the UK’s The Guardian, to discover that, not the august New York Times or Washington Post.

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead. […]

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked.Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts.Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution. “This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the facility. But after the Guardian published this story, the department provided a statement insisting, without specifics, that there is nothing untoward taking place at what it called the “sensitive” location, home to undercover units. […]

A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the late 1990s.

But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.

[…] Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices […] lawyers said occur at Homan Square. A directive titled “Processing Persons Under Department Control” instructs that “investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not delay the booking process,” and arrestees must be allowed “a reasonable number of telephone calls” to attorneys swiftly “after their arrival at the first place of custody.” Another directive, “Arrestee and In-Custody Communications,” says police supervisors must “allow visitation by attorneys.”

[…] Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police held people incommunicado for extended periods. “I’ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and just hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the hell out of me that that even exists or might exist,” said Trainum, who now studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.

[…] Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military gear to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report.

“The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,” Siska said. “They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”

Writing for The Intercept, Feb. 26, 2015, Juan Thompson describes the experiences of two Chicago black site detainees.

Kory Wright

Kory Wright, a Chicago resident and computer program analyst, claims that 9 years ago, he spent some 6 brutal hours at Homan Square, zip-tied to a bench in an intentionally overheated room without access to water, phone, or a restroom. He was never read his Miranda rights and his arrest was not put into the police system until after he gave false statements to try and end his ordeal.

Eventually, Wright was taken to Cook County jail, where he was processed and charged with distribution of heroin and cocaine. In the end, the drug charges against Wright were thrown out, though not before he’d spent six months under house arrest because his mother lacked the money to fund a bond for release.

Deandre Hutcherson, a friend of Wright’s swept up in the same police raid, described attacks to his face and genitals. Hutcherson was shackled to a bench and was being interrogated in another room. “He [a Chicago police officer] gets up, walking toward me,” Hutcherson alleges. “I already know what’s finna happen. I brace myself, and he hit me a little bit and then take his foot and stepped on my groin.” According to Hutcherson, the officer struck him two or three times in the face before kicking his penis. “You must think I’m a fucking idiot,” Hutcherson says his attacker told him. Within an hour, Hutcherson, who was in town for his mother’s funeral, faked an asthma attack that unnerved the police. He says they then released him from detention and sent him on his way.

The Chicago Police Department declined to address the specific allegations from Wright and his friend, providing only a general statement denying abuses at Homan Square. “CPD abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility,” the statement read. “There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square.”

Kory Wright was attending Wilbur Wright Community College, and taking criminal justice courses, when he was detained at Homan. He says he had hopes of becoming a police officer in the city of Chicago before that June day. His experience at Homan, and his subsequent arrest, caused him to miss a semester of school. Fortunately, Wright recovered, and today, at age 29, he is working on his master’s degree in network engineering at DePaul University. He lives in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, and is the father of a new baby girl. But the torture he says he suffered at Homan continues to haunt him. “The whole thing caused a rift between me and my mom. I didn’t like being black at all after that, and when I got to DePaul, I started trying to be as white as possible,” a doleful Wright told me. “Being black is a curse.”

Note: Kory Wright is now a programming analyst at Aon Hewitt. Here is his LinkedIn page. Send him a note of encouragement!

Ben Shapiro, attorney, author of Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America, and Brietbart.com editor-at-large, said in a recent column:

“If someone calls you a racist, and you respond by stating that they are a reasonable human being with policy differences, you grant their premise: A reasonable person has called you a racist, which means it is reasonable to call you racist. You lose.”

I am tired of losing.

I am tired of giving people on the Left the benefit of the doubt. Is it not clear they do not mean well? Is it not clear they don’t want the same things as we? Is it not clear they do not wish to arrive at the same destination via a different path? These people are not on our side, and were I in Congress I would not call any member of the opposition party “My honorable friend” or “esteemed colleague.” Decorum be damned.

In the last week we’ve seen former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani get criticized on every news show over his statement that he didn’t think Barack Obama loves America.True Americans cheered as Giuliani didn’t back down when challenged over the days that followed. Even Scott Walker, when asked about what Rudy said of Obama, essentially said, “Ask Obama.” Well done, both of you.

We need more of this, more of calling these people out.

And why shouldn’t we? Barack Obama has done more damage to this country than any president or elected official. We need to tell the truth.

He and his perpetually angry wife criticized our country during the 2008 campaign.

He began his administration with a trip around the world to apologize for every wrongdoing he believes America has committed.

He destroyed the best health care system in the world.

He pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving a gaping hole the Islamic State is only happy to fill with the blood and body parts of Jews, Christians, and not-the-right-kind-of-Muslims.

He traded five, high value terrorists for a proven Army deserter, some of whose fellow soldiers died looking for him.

He has spent more than all other presidents combined.

He vetoed a bipartisan bill that would allow the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline, bringing more energy independence and jobs to our nation.

He pushed the FCC to treat the Internet as a public utility, paving the way not just for speed but content restriction.

He granted de facto amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, and set processes in place to provide them tax credits and Social Security.

In every facet of our lives, Barack Obama and people like him on the Left want to control us — never asking if we want to be controlled nor checking with the Constitution on the legality of their actions. Free enterprise, health care, freedom of religion, free Internet, strong military — they destroy everything they touch.In protecting America or our allies from danger, these people have made it clear they want chaos to reign.

I don’t know what else to say other than this: I hate Barack Obama. You can’t call me racist because I hate Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, too. You can’t call me sexist because I hate Harry Reid and Dick Durbin. You can’t call me anti-pervert because I hate Joe Biden.

Do I hate these people personally? No. How could I? I know none of them. But I hate anyone who becomes part of the 1% off the freedoms of the best country this world will ever know, but with every breath they take seek to fundamentally transform it.

Do I hate these people more than the Islamic State? No, but I hold them responsible for the bloodshed painting the entire Middle East.

My hatred is bipartisan. You would like to think that since, for the moment, we still have elections, we could vote these people out and put in place principled and courageous leaders who will keep their multiple and fervent promises to stop Obama. And in 2010 and 2014 we set decades old records in political power shifting by handing Republicans the keys to Congress. Since then, Republicans have taken impeachment and funding (shutdowns) off the table. Please tell me where our negotiating power resides other than at the bottom of the pit in the movie “300.” Save for a few, patriotic stalwarts, I hate the Republicans too.

But I love God, Jesus, and the American people, and with faith in all of these I remain optimistic that while we’re in a really dark part of history, we will see the light.

Washington Times: The U.S. military is shedding so many troops and weapons it is only “marginally able” to defend the nation and falls short of the Obama administration’s national security strategy, says a new report by The Heritage Foundation Tuesday.

“The U.S. military itself is aging. It’s shrinking in size,” said Dakota Wood, a Heritage analyst. “And it’s quickly becoming problematic in terms of being able to address more than one major conflict.”

President Obama’s latest strategy to size the armed force pledged in 2014 that the four military branches have sufficient troops, ships, tanks and aircraft to win a large war, while simultaneously acting to “deny the objectives of––or impose unacceptable costs on––another aggressor in another region.”

In other words, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) says the military can essential fight two major conflicts at once. It could defeat an invasion of South Korea by the North, for example, and stop Russia from invading Western Europe or Iran from conquering a Persian Gulf state.

But Heritage’s “2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength” took a look, in detail, at units and weapons, region by region, and came to a different conclusion.

“The U.S. military is rapidly approaching a one-war capable force,” said Mr. Wood, a former Marine Corps officer and strategic planner. “So [it is] able to handle a major war and then having just a bit of residual capability to handle other minor crises that might pop up…But it is a far cry from being a two-war force.”

“The consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force are putting it under significant pressure,” the report concluded. “The cumulative effect of such factors has resulted in a U.S. military that is marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”

The index report is part scorecard, part research tool. It grades the Army, which is shrinking from 570,000 soldiers to 440,000 or lower, and the Navy, which is failing to a achieve a 300-ship Navy, as only “marginal” in military power. The Air Force’s fleet of fighters and long-range bombers is judged “strong.”

Here is an example of why Heritage says the military cannot fight two wars at once:

The report said the Army historically commits 21 Brigade Combat Teams to one war. Several years ago, that left just 21 more brigades for a second war, and none for strategic reserve. But the problem is more acute. The Army announced in 2013 it may go as low as 33 brigades, far short of the 50 brigades Heritage says are needed.

The Army has been battered by automatic budget cuts known as “sequestration.” A bipartisan budget deal provided some relief last year, but the slashing could come back in 2016 without another agreement.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, has said that if the active force is squeezed down to 420,000 soldiers it could not carry out all global commitments.

The Navy would need 346 ships to carry out two large campaigns, Heritage said, but its fleet is only 284.

At the report’s unveiling, Rep. Randy Forbes, Virginia Republican, talked of all the technological advancements that led to complete air superiority in the 1991 Desert Storm over Iraq.

Today, the Air Force, said the House Armed Services Committee member, “would say we are dangerously close to no longer being able to guarantee that air dominance that we could guarantee in Kuwait.”

“If you listen to the Army, they will give testimony they can no longer guarantee––you talk about two wars––they testified they can’t guarantee that we could win one war,” Mr. Forbes said. “The Navy will tell you if we get to 260 ships we cease to be a super power. We become a regional power.”

The Pentagon’s base budget, minus overseas war costs, has decreased under Mr. Obama, from $527 billion in 2010 to about $496 billion in each of the last three budgets. The president is asking for an increase in 2016 to $534 billion.

“The enemies that we have out there and competitors are making very smart investments accounting for their strategic objectives and interests,” Mr. Wood said.

“The lie is the distinguishing feature of evil, because of its self-devouring commitment to what is not: it is an inner vacuity.” -Anthony Esolen

How did deception and lying become so facile and common place in high places?

We have a President who lies habitually and can’t seem to tell lies from truth. Writing for the New York Post on Sept. 13, 2014, author Jack Cashill said he’s counted 75 significant liessince Obama’s campaign for president began, excluding the casual fibs and hyperbole Obama “spouts seemingly every day.” Here are some big whoppers:

“We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time.” — about the Benghazi attack of Sept. 11, 2011.

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

We also have a network news anchor Brian Williams, who makes an annual salary of $10 million that most Americans can only dream of, repeating a lie for 12 years that he was in a helicopter that was shot down by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) in Iraq in 2003.

And now we have another public figure, the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonaldwho, like Brian Williams, is a very successful man and, leaving aside the immorality of lying, doesn’t need to lie to burnish his credentials.

On the evening of Jan. 30, 2015, McDonald joined some volunteers who were out in the mean streets of Los Angeles counting the number of homeless veterans — all captured on video by CBS News.

McDonald came upon a black homeless vet.

The exchange between McDonald and the homeless vet begins at the 1:07 mark in the CBS news video (click here):

Wikipediasays Robert McDonald, 61, a retired Chairman, President, and CEO of Procter & Gamble, had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Army for 5 years, primarily in the 82nd Airborne Division, attaining the rank of Captain.

On February 23, 2015, 24 days after McDonald’s encounter with the homeless Special Forces vet, The Huffington Post published an article by David Wood stating that McDonald “wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in the Army’s elite special forces.”

Wood pointed out that:

U.S. special operations forces (SOF) are composed of exhaustively trained and highly capable troops from each military service, including the Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets) — but not the 82nd Airborne. […]

In fact, McDonald never served in special forces. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1975, completed Army Ranger training and took courses in jungle, arctic and desert warfare. He qualified as a senior parachutist and airborne jumpmaster, and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division until he resigned his commission in 1980. While he earned a Ranger tab designating him as a graduate of Ranger School, he never served in a Ranger battalion or any other special operations unit.

It was only when Huffington Post contacted McDonald to explain himself did this cabinet-level secretary in the Obama administration admit he had “misspoken”:

“I have no excuse,” McDonald told The Huffington Post, when contacted to explain his claim. “I was not in special forces.” […]

McDonald told The Huffington Post that he “wanted to clear up the confusion I probably created — I did create” in the exchange with the homeless man in L.A. Saying he was in special forces, McDonald said, “is not right. I was not in special forces. What I said was wrong.”

McDonald said he has many friends in the special forces community “and I have great respect for special forces.” But, he added, “as I thought about this later I knew this [claim] was wrong.”

When the homeless veteran claimed to have served in special forces, McDonald said, “I reacted spontaneously and I reacted wrongly, [with] no intent in any way to describe my record any different than it is.”

Ironically, McDonald was selected by Obama to replace Eric Shinseki, the retired Army general who resigned in disgrace last May following reports of widespread corruption and malfeasance within the VA.

But Barack Obama simply refuses to call the Islamic State, who now controls a third of Syria, as either Islamic or a state. Instead, in his speech of Sept. 10, 2014 and since, he calls ISIS jihadists — who have been slaughtering Christians in Iraq, Syria, and most recently beheading 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya — generic “terrorists.”

Incredibly, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf recently proclaimed that America can’t win against the Islamic State “by killing them” and ought instead to focus on addressing their root problem of a poor economy and a lack of job opportunities.

While treating the jihadists with denial and kid gloves, Obama doesn’t hesitate to identify millions of “right wing” Americans as “extremist terrorists,” the latest example being an intelligence assessment by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Evan Perez and Wes Bruer report for CNN, Feb. 20, 2015, that a new intelligence assessment, circulated by the DHS this month, focuses on the “domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists,” who reject government authority, carry out sporadic terror attacks on police, and threaten to attack other government buildings.

Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to — and in some cases greater than — the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS.​

Note: The sovereign citizen movement is a loosely affiliated group of Americans who believe they are free people and reject many elements of federal, state and local governance, including, but not limited to, taxation.According to Colorado Prowers County Undersheriff Ron Trowbridge, he was told at a Colorado State Police training session on April 1, 2013, that sovereign citizen groups include Americans who believe the United States was founded on godly principles and “fundamentalist” Christianswho take the Bible literally. (See Trail Dust’s “Have you ever heard of a ‘Sovereign Citizen’?“)

The DHS report, produced in coordination with the FBI, defines sovereign citizens as “extremists” who believe they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order. The report counts 24 “violent” sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010, including:

In 2012, a father and son allegedly engaged in a shootout with police in Louisiana in which two officers were killed and several others wounded. The confrontation began with an officer pulling them over for a traffic violation. The men were sovereign citizen “extremists” who claimed police had no authority over them.

In 2013, a man who held anti-government views carried out a shooting attack on three Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one TSA officer.

In 2014, a couple killed two police officers and a bystander at a Las Vegas Walmart store.

Other findings in the DHS intelligence assessment include:

An expectation that sovereign citizen “violence during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect’s home, during enforcement stops and at government offices.”

“Law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations.”

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism, with a core of perhaps 100,000. Potok says sovereign citizen groups have attracted support because of poor economic conditions. Some groups travel the country pitching their ideology as a way to help homeowners escape foreclosure or get out of debt by simply ignoring the courts and bankruptcy law.

While groups like ISIS and al Qaeda garner the most attention, for many local cops, the danger is closer to home. A survey last year of state and local law enforcement officers listed “sovereign citizen terrorists” as the top domestic terror threat, ahead of foreign Islamists and domestic militia groups. The survey was part of a study produced by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

The DHS intelligence assessment coincides with the Obama administration’s convening of a White House summit on fighting “violent extremism” last week.

Penny Starr reports for CNS News, Feb. 19, 2015, that the second day of the summit had opened with a Muslim prayer by an imam, Sheikh Sa’ad Musse Roble of the Minneapolis’ World Peace [sic] Organization, following remarks by Obama administration officials and Democratic members of Congress. No other faiths were represented.

This is not the first time that the DHS identifies “right wing” Americans as “domestic terrorists.

In 2012, a DHS-funded study, Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008 — by the same University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism that conducted the 2014 survey of state and local police officers — characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

In fact, University of Maryland’s National Consortium was launched with the aid of DHS, that is, taxpayers’, funding to the tune of $12 million.

This is VERY IMPORTANT, sobering, and downright frightening, so please make time to read it. The West has become so secular and post-modern relativists, we are incredulous about people who genuinely, truly are ideological/religious fanatics. Our politicians and opinion leaders made that mistake with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and they are doing it again with ISIS or the Islamic State.

Read and listen to what ISIS says! Put simply, ISIS is bat sh*t crazy. Not only are they Islamic, they are fundamentalist in their beliefs. Not only are they fundamentalist Muslims, determined to return the world to the medieval ages and committed to the grotesque barbarism wielded by Mohammad (beheadings, crucifixions, slavery), ISIS is apocalyptic in their beliefs. They are convinced the end times are near, and that the Islamic State is an instrument to bring on the apocalypse.

Please read and forward/disseminate via email & social media. Do it for your lives and those of your loved ones.

In his bestseller book, People of the Lie, the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, M.D., wrote that just as physicians must first properly diagnose and name a disease in order to cure it, we must first name a problem in order to combat it.

Although ISIS/ISIL calls itself the Islamic State, President Barack Obama refuses to identify the group that now controls a third of Syria as either Islamic or a state. Instead, in his speech of Sept. 10, 2014 and since, he calls the Muslim jihadists — who have been slaughtering Christians in Iraq, Syria, and most recently beheading 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya — generic “terrorists.”

Taking their cue from Obama, U.S. media like NBC News also call ISIS “terrorists,” absent any qualifying adjective. And although he denounced the beheading of the Coptic Christians and called them “martyrs,” Pope Francis similarly refuses to identify their killers as…

11 Alive NBC: A hacker purporting to be an ISIS sympathizer breached the social accounts of a U.S. Marine’s wife Tuesday, threatening her then using her Twitter feed to threaten at least four other military spousesand the Obama family, two of the spouses confirmed to NBC News.

The FBI is investigating the breach and the online threats, said Liz Snell, a Marine wife, whose Twitter and Facebook accounts were hacked. Snell’s husband was deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan five times.

The FBI pulled down Snell’s Twitter account on Tuesday morning, she said, and Snell removed her compromised Facebook profile. NBC News contacted the FBI, seeking confirmation that the agency is investigating the matter. The agency has not yet responded to that query.

In a separate tweet from Snell’s account to the Obamas, the hacker claimed the President and his family are being watched and mentioned Valentine’s Day, according to screen shots obtained by NBC News.

Snell as well as at least three of the threatened spouses all were quoted in a Jan. 14 CNN.com article that explored how military families were rethinking their online lives following the Jan. 12 hacking of social media accounts at the U.S. military’s Central Command. That article seems to be the lone common thread among the hacking victims, Snell said.

In that breach, CENTCOM’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised and hackers posted pro-ISIS messages and images similar to those tweeted by a hacker Tuesday. In January, the unknown hacker caused the CENTCOM accounts to be taken down for hours.

“Ultimately, my feeling is that I don’t want anyone [who follows her on social media] to feel that they are unsafe,” Snell told NBC News. “I feel some level of responsibility … This does make me nervous.”

Snell said she was in touch Tuesday with other named spouses to check on their safety. She operates the non-profit website Military Spouses of Strength, a hub for military-family members grappling with mental-health issues in the wake of two long wars.

The hacker also sent Facebook messages to Snell and to at least one other military spouse, claiming to know details about their lives, and the lives of their husbands and children.The hacker also claimed to be in close proximity to both Snell and the other spouse.

“It was a ‘We know where you are’ kind of thing,” Snell said. “We [my family] are taking precautions just to ensure safety measures are in place.”

One of the five military spouses threatened Tuesday is Ashley Broadway-Mack. Her spouse is an Army officer. She was also quoted in the CNN.com story about the impact the CENTCOM breach had on military families. “I’m not going to lie. It’s shocking to actually see your name along with some type of threat,” Broadway-Mack told NBC News. “This has me a little on edge.” Broadway-Mack immediately notified the members of her spouse’s chain of command to alert them to the breach, she said.

“In the same breath, if I were to shut down my Twitter, shut down my Facebook, to me, they [the hacker] won,” she said. “I refuse to do that. Will I put up extra protection on my social media? Yes. I have. Whether this is ISIS directly or someone posing as ISIS, I don’t know. I trust the FBI and any other agencies that may be working on these types of threats. I trust them. And I refuse to live my life in fear.”

Amy Bushatz, a third military spouse who received online threats from the same breach, blogged about the experience Tuesday. Her husband is an Army officer who deployed to Afghanistan. “Military spouses are used to being brave. We’re used to standing up for ourselves. We are married to somebody who is living, often, in a very scary situation – deployed with their life is in imminent danger. That’s unnerving. We’re used to those feelings. We’re not people who are easily bullied by terrorists,” Bushatz told NBC News.

Being contacted directly by a purported ISIS sympathizer, Bushatz said, “is a little frightening.” “That being said, there is a difference between being afraid and living in fear. The question is, really, what are you going to do with that [feeling]?”

“There’s no reason to be running around town with a sticker on your car saying that you’re an Army wife,” she said. “That does not mean you have to be living in fear, though. This is not a reason to delete your Facebook account,” Bushatz said. “It might be a reason to take that loud-and-proud picture of your husband in uniform off of a place where everybody and their terrorist friend can see it. But it’s not a reason to go into hiding.”

Silly hackers, trying to threaten women now? They should be aware that many have taken precautions to ensure safety measures are in place!